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Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

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Re: Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

#91
I was curious about the medals, compositions, and materials costs so here's what I found.

The dimensions of the medals are specified as a minimum of 60mm diameter by 3mm thick. For a cylinder, that's 8.482 cm^3 volume per medal, minimum. The 2020 Olympics has 339 events, each with a gold, silver, and bronze medal. Market price I found for gold as of this post is $58.56/g and silver is $0.82/g. Gold has a density of 19.30 g/cm^3 and silver 10.49 g/cm^3. I'm not keeping track of sig figs because I don't care enough for a quick rundown.

For the gold medal, its composition is listed as minimum 92.5% silver with 6g of gold mixed in. I didn't see what the percentage specified (mass, volume) so I'll assume volume for silver henceforth. 7.845 cm^3 is 92.5% of min volume of a medal. This works out to 82.294 g of silver (7.845 cm^3 * 10.49 g/cm^3). Using market prices above, silver value: $67.48, gold value: $351.36, total materials value: $418.84.

Now, if the gold medal were solid gold, you'd have 163.703 g (8.482 cm^3 * 19.3 g/cm^3) of gold. Materials market value of the medal would be $9,586.

For the silver medal, it's 92.5 silver with nothing specified mixed in. So the identical silver component from the gold medal which means its total materials value is $67.48.

If the silver medal was pure silver, we'd have 88.976 g (8.482 cm^3 * 10.49 g/cm^3) and the materials value would be $72.96.

The bronze is 97% copper, 0.5% tin, and 2.5% zinc. I won't do this because I'm not interested, I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

Now the fun part, rough estimate of total material cost of existing gold and silver medal compositions for all 339 events: $164,862.48 (339 * ($418.84 + $67.48)).

Rough material cost if the gold medals were actually gold and the silver were actually silver: $3.274 million (339*($9,586 + $72.96). It would cost about 20x the current material costs to give the athletes more representitive and valuable medals. The total cost of this would be an additional ~$3.1 million to the host or whoever pays for it.

Re: Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

#92
post #89

I'm a bit surprised that there are more Silver than Copper and Zinc in electronics . Quote: the government collected several million tonnes of equipment, and extracted 32 kilograms of gold, 3500 kilograms of silver and 2200 kilograms of copper and zinc for the bronze medals

So where did all the non-gold material go? The millions of tons that wasn't precious metals? I see little point in recycling something if 99.99% by volume goes to the landfill anyway.

Re: Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whole thing seems to be about the denied rights of parents, not children? Doesn’t mention what any child wants anywhere. Weird to dress it up as being about the children.

Children benefit to have both parents in their lives, especially when young and can not express consent. There are enough studies and exemples in every other developed countries where it's the norm that it's not a matter of opinion. The UN's CRC is indeed about Children's Human Rights. The specific article in question being Art 9.3

Yet the story is 'man denied right to see children', not 'children denied right to see father'.

Re: Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

#94
post #91

I was curious about the medals, compositions, and materials costs so here's what I found. The dimensions of the medals are specified as a minimum of 60mm diameter by 3mm thick. For a cylinder, that's 8.482 cm^3 volume per medal, minimum. The 2020 Olympics has 339 events, each with a gold, silver, and bronze medal. Market price I found for gold as of this post is $58.56/g and silver is $0.82/g. Gold has a density of 1…

> Olympics has 339 events, each with a gold, silver, and bronze medal.

Many events are team-based too, where every team member gets a medal.

Re: Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

#95
post #89

I'm a bit surprised that there are more Silver than Copper and Zinc in electronics . Quote: the government collected several million tonnes of equipment, and extracted 32 kilograms of gold, 3500 kilograms of silver and 2200 kilograms of copper and zinc for the bronze medals

I'm fairly sure that this is simply the amount that they recovered for the medals specifically, not all the copper and zinc they extracted from that equipment.

Re: Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

#96
post #89

I'm a bit surprised that there are more Silver than Copper and Zinc in electronics . Quote: the government collected several million tonnes of equipment, and extracted 32 kilograms of gold, 3500 kilograms of silver and 2200 kilograms of copper and zinc for the bronze medals

So where did all the non-gold material go? The millions of tons that wasn't precious metals? I see little point in recycling something if 99.99% by volume goes to the landfill anyway.

Profit. Recycling rare materials is profitable. Keeping stuff out of landfills is not really why stuff is recycled- thats why we had that whole crisis recently with Recycling materials building up with no destination

Re: Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

#97
post #94
post #91

I was curious about the medals, compositions, and materials costs so here's what I found. The dimensions of the medals are specified as a minimum of 60mm diameter by 3mm thick. For a cylinder, that's 8.482 cm^3 volume per medal, minimum. The 2020 Olympics has 339 events, each with a gold, silver, and bronze medal. Market price I found for gold as of this post is $58.56/g and silver is $0.82/g. Gold has a density of 1…

> Olympics has 339 events, each with a gold, silver, and bronze medal. Many events are team-based too, where every team member gets a medal.

Very good point. I don't really watch sports and 339 was the best representitive number I could find for total medals awarded. I imagine if you knew how many medals were team based, the fixed sizes of teams that get medals, and so on you could work this out more accurately then.

Re: Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

#99
post #89

I'm a bit surprised that there are more Silver than Copper and Zinc in electronics . Quote: the government collected several million tonnes of equipment, and extracted 32 kilograms of gold, 3500 kilograms of silver and 2200 kilograms of copper and zinc for the bronze medals

So where did all the non-gold material go? The millions of tons that wasn't precious metals? I see little point in recycling something if 99.99% by volume goes to the landfill anyway.

The point is the symbolic gesture.

This doesn't help with any environmental goals.

Re: Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic equipment

#100
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It comes from London frequently having money lavished on it that other areas don’t (eg - check public transport [1]) - and usually accompanied with a self-fulfilling prophecy about how other areas don’t generate tax income (which of course is because they don’t have good infra and investment). And this situation has been very much engineered by the UK government over the last 40 years, it isn’t some state of nature.…

I just want to chime in here and agree with this wholeheartedly. There is a lot of self-fulfilment when it comes to London spending vs London generation of revenues. It's famously the case that London props up almost the entire rest of the country. Scotland itself being a net-loss in terms of GDP. I come from a City called Coventry, "investment" in the city is non-existent; the only investor right now is the Universi…

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